“The rich are different from you and me, Ernest,” said F. Scott Fitzgerald.

“I know,” Hemingway replied, “They have more money.”

As I read this ENR story about DOT Secretary Ray LaHood instituting a $473M US program for funding construction on highway, transit, passenger rail or port work, I contemplated how different government is from business. Like the rich are different than the rest of us.

The $473M was actually funds appropriated between 2003 and 2006 that never got spent due to projects not proceeding. So staffers at DOT went through the files and found 671 idle earmarks, that could have the funds re-directed to some new project. States must apply to re-allocate their funds by October 1, 2012.

The substantial politics aside, imagine looking back in your business records 6 to 9 years and finding some plans that went differently, then pretending that money was available from that change. Your banker would have an issue with that thinking rather quickly.

Governments, though, don’t have to fiddle around (at least in the short term) with where the money comes from. The funds were approved and will be spent soon.

As I get older, I’m getting more comfortable with the large gulf between the way things should be and the way things are. Unhappy fanatics tend to live in “The way things should be” land. While I think we should all continue to strive to make things better, it’s reasonable to play by the current rules.

In fact, I’m currently working on a couple projects and pursuing some public-private partnerships. As I run the numbers, I’m amazed to see how some public funding leverage can help create hundreds of millions of dollars of private economic activity. So I’m not sure where I stand in my politics, but I seem to be living in “The way things are” land.